Long-running British band The Fall have been prolific enough that their output is best measured in board-feet rather than number of releases. Light User Syndrome, which thickens their catalog to, oh, four feet or so, continues in the band's tradition of having no traditions. The only constant remains "singer" Mark E. Smith - nasty, British, and short - whose acerbic rantings and distinctly flat Mancunian intonation instantly identify any of their output, no matter how diverse the musical materials. This is the first Fall album since 1980 or so not to feature guitarist Craig Scanlon (fired, apparently, for "slovenly appearance and failure to maintain amps." Well, it's a lot more creative than the eternal "musical differences"). Brix Smith, MES's ex-wife and veteran of the band's mid-80s incarnation, returns for the second consecutive album on guitar and vocals, bringing a slightly more pop coloration to the material. This sound runs head on into The Fall's ongoing flirtation with electronica and vaguely Teutonic noise structures. "Interlude/Chilinism," for example (a version of last year's "Chiselers" single), might best be described as techno-skiffle. Its varying sections of slightly different tempo and feel are stitched together in a sort of Frankenstein-monster dub production technique. Elsewhere, the band forcibly grafts the guitar riff from "I Can't Explain" to an amphetamine Bo Diddley rattle ("D.I.Y. Meat"), or overlays a sequenced keyboard rhythm track with Big Guitar: J. Arthur Rank in an abandoned sheet metal factory ("Coliseum"). Generally, Light User Syndrome finds Mark E. Smith letting words drool out of his mouth like small pebbles, rather than his usual technique of spitting out syllables, like shrapnel-uh. Despite this mucking about with strange racket, most songs here manage to kick along courtesy of the great bass/drums duo, Stephen Hanley and Simon Wolstencroft (with occasional assistance from returning Fall alumnus Karl Burns on second drums and sometimes guitar). The best Fall songs spew Smith's verbal sputterings and oddball sound ideas all over a propulsive repetition that feels as if it could comfortably go on for nearly half an hour - which they often did in the early '80s. Here, that intensity is generally compressed into four or five minute songs, making this one of the better Fall albums in recent years. Every Fall album, though, features a track or two which seems to exist solely to try the patience of the listener. Light User Syndrome features three: two covers (one of a Johnny Paycheck song!), and "Secession Man," an original which would sound like a synthesized EuroVision calypso entry if it weren't for MES's socially unacceptable voice. (Perversely, I rather like it.) But hey - the disc's an hour long, which makes fifty minutes of prime Fall.

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